Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin commissioned a team of inspectors including police officers and civil servants to investigate the police chief's remarks, which triggered mixed reactions among politicians.

World Bulletin / News Desk

The Interior Ministry launched an investigation on Friday into remarks made by Diyarbakır Police Chief Recep Güven who recently said Turkey's Kurdish problem will not be resolved unless tears are also shed for PKK militants killed in clashes with security forces.

Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin commissioned a team of inspectors including police officers and civil servants to investigate the police chief's remarks, which triggered mixed reactions among politicians.

Güven's statements came last week during a meeting with journalists in a coffee house in Diyarbakır. He said that the region where Diyarbakır is located has produced many admirable people in the past, with its beautiful geographical and historical texture, but that the region is today raising “monsters” due to a lack of supervision and control.

“It is because of our failure to reach out to people, to provide social services, not because of any other reason. If one youth is going up to the mountains [to join the PKK], we are all responsible for this. How can we not engage in self-criticism?” he said. Güven, who spent five years in Diyarbakır as an intelligence officer in the 1990s, recently returned to the province as its police chief from the eastern province of Siirt.

Also on Friday, the Turkish Public Workers' Labor Union (Kamu-Sen) filed a criminal complaint on Friday against Güven over his terror remarks.

Speaking to reporters before submitting the complaint to the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, Kamu-Sen President İsmail Koncuk said the Turkish nation would never cry for people who take up arms against the Turkish state and kill Turkish citizens.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the police chief may have made the remarks in order to “make some people happy.”

“We have not and will not shed tears for terrorists killed in the fight against terrorism. I am so clear on that. Let everyone know it. We will not make statements just to make some happy,” he said, addressing a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) parliamentary group meeting.

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